


Please Let There Be You

by saiyanshewolf (gossamerstarsxx)



Series: Shot Through the Heart [7]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angry MacCready, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Comfort, Crying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Getting to Know Each Other, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Late Night Conversations, Non-Chronological, One Shot, One Shot Collection, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Relationship, Widowed, comfort cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 10:39:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14376933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gossamerstarsxx/pseuds/saiyanshewolf
Summary: Antha misses her husband. MacCready may not be great at the whole emotional support thing, but this is a pain he knows. Intimately.





	Please Let There Be You

**Author's Note:**

> Another thing about MacCready: In terms of the Sole Survivor's experiences, his story is (in my opinion) the most relatable out of all the companions. He watched his wife die and is trying to save his son. I started wondering how that would play out early in his partnership with the Sole Survivor, before he has told them about his family but after he knows about theirs. I also maybe wanted an excuse to explore Mac's temper a little, as well as allude to his sniper skills...and an excuse to write something angsty for my SS. 
> 
> The song used in the fic is [Let There Be You by the Five Keys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7pkwJcWwh0).
> 
> More on Antha [here](http://saiyanshewolf.tumblr.com/tagged/my+sole+survivor).

"What the hell was so important?!"

MacCready rounds on her as they make it to Home Plate, shaking from adrenaline and anger as he thumbs the safety on his rifle and shoves it into the gun cabinet by the door.

Antha, still in her power armor, makes no reply. She sets the heavy karaoke machine on the floor near the couch - a fetch job from Hancock. MacCready hadn't believed they'd find a working one, but they had, way down in the basement of a ruined music shop, along with thousands of holotapes full of songs that he has never heard on any radio station, in the Capital or the Commonwealth. Antha had shoved hundreds of those into a duffel bag before picking up the machine; she drops this onto the couch, then marches toward a corner with heavy pneumatic steps.

Most of the time, watching Antha exit a suit of power armor never fails to make MacCready laugh. She's all of 5'2 in her boots, and every time she wants to get out of her armor she has to lean back, brace herself against the open upper edge of the suit, and execute a silly little push-hop. It's funny every time; sometimes it's almost cute.

This time it's neither because MacCready is so furious he can't see straight.

"The godda - godforsaken bag was full! You had more than enough friggin holotapes! I was sprinting across the mother-friggin' rooftops trying to keep up with you in that armor and trying to keep those friggin Super Mutants off your ass!"

Antha says nothing, doesn't so much as acknowledge that he's spoken - doesn't, in truth, even seem to realize that he's there. She sits on the couch next to the bag and starts to rifle through it, muttering under her breath, and MacCready has to fight off the urge to throw something against the wall.

"Don't you ignore me," he snaps, "Especially after I kept you from getting crushed in that friggin tin can!"

"Mac, I'm sorry," Antha mumbles, still not looking at him. "I just - I know I put it in here..."

A strangled sound of frustration rises in his throat and he flings his hat on the coffee table - a compromise between doing nothing and throwing it across the room. Shoving his disheveled hair back from his forehead, he starts to pace, needing to move before he does something shitty like put his fist through the wall.

"What was so goddamn important," he says, speaking through his teeth, too angry to watch his mouth, "That you went and almost got yourself killed by Super Mutants again?!"

Antha's only reply is a soft intake of breath as she finds what she's been looking for: a faded blue holotape, the words on the side all but illegible, the same one she had gone for even after he told her it was past time to get out. As a result a pack of Super Mutants had spotted her, triggering the hellish sprint back toward Diamond City.

Things might have been different if Antha could fight in a suit of power armor. Despite owning three sets, she doesn't like to wear it. When she does it's only for short periods of time during jobs that require some sort of heavy lifting, and only when she has a partner to cover her. Once she enters the suit she becomes a walking tank, but she renders herself useless for any sort of offense; her reflexes suffer, her aim suffers, and she ends up panicking.

MacCready suspects it has something to do with her claustrophobia, but this meant that when the Super Mutants had attacked, she had been well-armored but completely unarmed. In his mad scramble to get above the mutants and pick them off before they could tear Antha out of her power armor, he had doomed himself to a terrifying test of his agility; when Antha ran, the mutants followed, and MacCready had found himself chasing after them along rooftops and fire escapes and scaffolding, taking out the ones closest to her as best he could. He has no idea how he managed to stay above them or how they made it back; all he remembers is his heartbeat pounding in his ears every time he paused to aim, the way his gut dropped every time he jumped without bothering to look down. The Diamond City guards had taken out the last two mutants, and MacCready had followed Antha back to Home Plate in tense, forced silence, lightheaded, unable to speak for the agonizing stitch in his side.

All that...for a holotape...containing a single pre-war song.

"Antha, look at me, dammit!"

Startled, Antha does as she's told. There is a strange, almost fearful look in her eyes, and MacCready wonders uneasily if that is his fault. The thought makes him pause long enough to gather himself before he speaks again.

"Antha," he repeats, his voice tight but controlled, "Antha, please, for god's sake, talk to me, okay? Why the hell did you risk death by Super Mutant to get your hands on one holotape?"

Antha turns the tape over and over in her hands, fiddling with it in the same absent, nervous way she usually fiddles with her wedding band. "I'm sorry, I know you're mad. I'd be mad at me too. It's...it was stupid. I know that, I could have gotten us both killed, I'm sorry. It's j-just..."

To MacCready's shock, her voice cracks. She stops herself short, closing her eyes and swallowing hard before she tries to continue.

"I just...couldn't leave it," she says at length. "I recognized it as soon as I saw it and I couldn't leave it."

"Antha, what is it?" MacCready asks, doing his best not to sound as frustrated as he feels.

She looks up at him again, then back at the tape as if she is too ashamed of herself to meet his eye, thumbs brushing over the faded label.

"It's, um...I had a copy before the war," she murmurs. "It's our song. Mine and...mine and Nate's song."

She falls silent, worrying her lower lip with her teeth, throat working as if she's trying to swallow her tears. MacCready stares at her, shaken, every trace of anger in him evaporating as her words settle onto his conscience like a lead weight.

_Good job, asshole._

After a moment's hesitation, he sinks down beside her on the couch, elbows on his knees.

"I shouldn't...I didn't...crap," he mumbles, scrubbing his hands over his face as he tries to find the right words. "I shouldn't have jumped down your throat like that. Shoulda known you never would have done something like that unless it was important. Sorry, boss."

"Don't be sorry," Antha mumbles. "It was a stupid, reckless thing to do. Nate's dead. Listening to this isn't going to bring him back."

The words themselves are harsh, but her voice is unsteady and there are tears standing in her eyes. In other circumstances that would terrify him, but this is a pain he knows.

Intimately.

"It's not wrong to want something to remember him by," he says. "'Specially since you're pre-war. Not much left of that life lying around."

"All it's going to do is hurt me," Antha replies. Her voice is soft and laden with disgust.

"Well, yeah," he agrees. "Course it is. But one day it won't. One day it'll make you happy. Least that's what they tell me."

Antha gives him a searching look; he presses on, nervous.

"I just mean you'll be glad you grabbed it when you had the chance," he says, "Never mind the Super Mutants and never mind my bih - uh - complaining."

Antha nods. To his relief, she looks away from him, back at the holotape, still stroking her thumbs over the label.

"Listen," MacCready says after a beat of silence, "I can head to the Dugout for the night if you want to be alone. Not like I'm hard up for caps, running around with you."

"The last thing in the world that I want right now is to be alone," Antha murmurs, "But I don't want you to have to deal with me being a weepy mess, MacCready. That wasn't in your job description."

"Technically there was no job description," he reminds her, "Besides do what you tell me and be nice to Dogmeat."

Antha gives a rueful, watery laugh. "Well I'm not about to order you to stay, Mac. I wouldn't wish that on anybody."

"Boss, I don't care if you're a weepy mess as long as it makes sense for you to be a weepy mess," he says. "And right now it makes sense."

Antha laughs again, still sniffling. "Mac, you already think I'm...I don't know. Reckless. Stupid, probably. I just don't want you to think I'm weak, too."

_Weak?_

MacCready is quiet for a moment, remembering the first few months after Lucy. Arya had to beg him to get out of bed, had watched him like a hawk to make sure he ate, and Butch had locked his rifle and other weapons in a footlocker. The only thing he had done without being prompted was take care of Duncan, and even that he had done in a daze.

 _That was weakness,_ MacCready thinks, _This isn't._

It doesn't occur to him to figure out the distinction.

"I know you're not weak," he says. "You're just...you miss him. That doesn't make you weak, it makes you human."

"I don't feel human. I feel like a ghost," she whispers. "My world is dead, but I'm still walking the ruins. Alone."

MacCready - who still has days where he feels the same - is relieved that Arya is a thousand miles away, because the next words out of his mouth are the same ones that she had said to him over and over after Lucy died, ones that he could never believe at the time.

"It seems like that 'cause he's not with you," he says. "But that doesn't mean you're alone."

She gives him a faint smile, turning the holotape over and over in her hands.

"That thing on your arm, it'll play holotapes, right?" he asks. "If you wanna listen to it...well, I'm not great at this stuff, but I'll stay with you. Or hell, I'll go break into Publick Occurrences and wake Piper for you, if that'd be better? Or I can take you to Hancock if you're up for a walk. I know Nick's on a case..."

Antha's smile spreads into a grin even through her tears. "Thanks, but I think...I think I'd rather have you."

MacCready's eyes widen. Antha laughs softly as she swipes at her cheeks.

"Nothing against them," she mumbles, "I just...I don't talk to them m-much about...about before. About my family, anyway. Anything else, sure, but this is different."

MacCready swallows hard, wondering why it should be different - why he should be different - why she should want him, of all people. Still, he keeps his mouth shut, trying to concentrate on Antha instead of his own confusion.

"Well, here I am," he murmurs, nudging her shoulder with his. "Guess Piper might just shoot me, anyway. Let's hear this song, boss."

Antha pops the tape player on her Pip-Boy and slips the holotape inside, but her shaking hand hesitates as she goes to close it.

"The silly part is, I don't think we ever even said that this was our song. We danced to something different at our wedding, but...this is...he sang this one to me."

MacCready stays quiet, listening.

"I was a freshman in college when we met, and we were both at this party...and he really, really wanted me to go on a date with him." She sniffs, laughing under her breath at the memory. "I told him...um, I said he had to impress me first, so he...when this song came on he stole the dj's microphone, jumped up on a table, pointed at me...and just...started singing."

She wipes her eyes with the cuff of her Vault suit, giggling through her tears. "He danced. Badly. On the table. And he was singing in the most...it was this ridiculous, exaggerated teen-idol voice? It was awful, but kind of cute-awful. Nothing serious or romantic. He was just a cute guy trying to get a date by doing something silly."

"Hey, seems like it worked," MacCready says.

Antha nods, still laugh-crying as she closes the tape player on her Pip-Boy. She hesitates yet again, with one finger on the 'play' button.

"It worked," she agrees, and her voice softens as her grin fades. "It worked again the night he proposed. We were out with some friends for my birthday, and the place was having a karaoke night. Nate dragged me onstage and sat me on a stool and I was expecting, you know, Happy Birthday Mr. President or something else ridiculous, but he...the music started and I recognized the song right away, but he wasn't...there was no whiny teen-idol voice, no silly dance moves. Just him, singing, and he...he meant it. Every single word. And at the end he got down on one knee and..."

Antha trails off, covering her mouth with her hand as her shoulders tremble. MacCready waits, letting her lean against him, pushing back a little to let her know that it's alright. After a moment or two she composes herself again, just long enough to finish the story.

"The day the bombs fell...Nate carried Shaun when we ran to the Vault. He was being fussy, I guess from the running, and I...I remember Nate getting into the cryostasis pod with Shaun in his arms, and he was...he was humming this under his breath. Like a lullaby...oh, God."

She stares at her Pip-Boy and presses play.

 _Let there be light and there was a light_  
_Let there be Earth and there was Earth_  
_If I had my way I would ask of him_  
_Please let there be you_  
  
_Let there be rain and there was rain_  
_Let there be heaven up above_  
_If I had my way I would ask of him_  
_Please let there be you_  
  
_You are the feeling of Spring_  
_You're the beginning of dawn_  
_You are the meaning of everything_  
_How could anyone go wrong_  
  
_Let there be stars and there were stars_  
_Let there be moon and there was moon_  
_If I had my way I would ask of him_  
_Please let there be you_  
_Please let there be you_

MacCready has never heard the song before in his life, but even without the context the sentiment hits home. Even after four years, he still misses Lucy so much that it aches. Antha...by her reckoning it has been less than a year since the world ended, since she saw her son kidnapped and her husband murdered in front of her eyes.

As the notes fade out she begins to shake, her throat working. When a sob finally wrenches its way out of her chest she claps her hands over her mouth, struggling to keep it in, to keep it together, and MacCready knows that there's no longer any point in trying to tell himself that this is none of his business, no point in trying to pretend that he doesn't care about her, because seeing her in so much pain has his own eyes blurring with tears.

He says nothing, knowing too well that there's nothing to say. Instead he puts an arm around her and pulls her in against his chest. Antha folds against him, clinging to the lapels of his duster and burying her face into his shirt, finally letting herself fall apart.


End file.
